Fannā (Panāh) Khusraw (Persian: پناه (فنا) خسرو), better known by his laqab of ʿAḍud al-Dawla (Arabic: عضد الدولة, lit.

At the height of his power, he ruled an empire stretching from Makran to Yemen and the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

He is widely regarded as the greatest monarch of the Buyid dynasty, and by the end of his reign he was the most powerful ruler in the Middle East.

Fanna Khusraw then requested the title of "Taj al-Dawla" (Crown of the state) from the Abbasid caliph.

[4][2] Adud al-Dawla was only thirteen when he was crowned as the ruler of Fars, and was educated there by his tutor Abu 'l-Fadl ibn al-'Amid.

[6][7] When Adud al-Dawla became emir of Iraq, the capital city, Baghdad, was suffering from violence and instability owing to sectarian conflict.

In 955, a Daylamite military officer named Muhammad ibn Makan seized Isfahan from Rukn al-Dawla.

[10] In 967, Adud al-Dawla took advantage of the quarrel between the Ilyasid ruler Muhammad ibn Ilyas and his son in Kerman to annex the province to his domain.

[12] In the next year, Adud al-Dawla negotiated peace with the Saffarid ruler Khalaf ibn Ahmad, who agreed to recognize Buyid authority.

[8] In 969/970, Sulaiman, the son of Muhammad ibn Ilyas, wanted to regain his kingdom of Kerman, and invaded the region.

Adud al-Dawla managed to defeat the army of Sulaiman and continued to expand his domains to the strait of Hormuz.

Adud al-Dawla quickly left Fars to quell the rebellion, where he inflicted a decisive defeat on the rebels on 30 January 975, who under their new leader, Alptakin, fled to Syria.

[2] In 975 Adud al-Dawla launched an expedition to take Bam and defeated another son of Muhammad ibn Ilyas who sought to reconquer Kerman.

Adud al-Dawla, greatly outraged by his cousin, marched towards Khuzestan and easily defeated him in Ahvaz on 1 July 977.

However, on the road to Syria, Izz al-Dawla became convinced by Abu Taghlib, the Hamdanid ruler of Mosul, to go fight again against his cousin.

[5][14] Adud al-Dawla then marched to Mosul and captured the city,[15] which forced Abu Taghlib to flee to the Byzantine region of Anzitene, where he asked for aid.

[8] The important Hamdanid city of Mayyafariqin was shortly captured by them, which forced Abu Taghlib to flee to Rahba from where he tried to negotiate peace with Adud al-Dawla.

Adud al-Dawla then made the Abbasid caliph give Qabus the title of Shams al-Ma'ali.

[21] In 982, Adud al-Dawla sent another envoy to Constantinople, this time, Abu Ishaq ibn Shahram, who, after spending three months in the city, concluded a 10-year peace treaty with them.

One year later, a Byzantine envoy arrived back in Baghdad, but Adud al-Dawla was too ill to bring an end to the negotiations.

In the end, the 10-year peace treaty was finally completed, and the Byzantines also agreed to mention Adud al-Dawla's name in the Friday prayer in Constantinople.

Shiraz particularly benefited from this work: there, he built a palace with three hundred and sixty rooms with advanced wind towers for air conditioning.

His contributions to the enrichment of Fars made it a region of relative stability and prosperity for the culture of Iran during the Seljuq and Mongol invasions.

Abu'l-Husain Ahmad was supported by his mother and his uncle, Fuladh ibn Manadhar, as the heir to the Buyid Empire.

However, Abu Kalijar Marzuban, because of his more prominent descent, was appointed as heir to the Buyid Empire by Adud al-Dawla.

[27] Adud al-Dawla, like previous Buyid rulers, maintained the Abbasids in Baghdad, which gave legitimacy to his dynasty in the eyes of some Sunni Muslims.

[29] He visited Persepolis alongside Marasfand, the Zoroastrian chief priest (mobad) of Kazerun,[23] who read the pre-Islamic inscriptions in the city for him.

Adud al-Dawla later left an inscription in the city, which tells about his awareness of being heir of an ancient pre-Islamic civilization.

[2] Like many of his contemporaries, he does not seem to have felt that his admiration for the pre-Islamic Iranian civilization conflicted with his Muslim Shiite faith.